Burberry Lip Velvet – Military Red

I’ve been researching red lipsticks rather thoroughly recently (for a piece in SLiNK), and, being fond of a bit of Burberry makeup, this has been a nice addition to my collection. It’s from their new matte lipstick collection.

It’s packaged in a matte tube, rather than the shiny pewter livery that we’re used to:

(personally, I prefer the shiny, but that’s just because I’m a bit of a magpie)

I do adore the Burberry pattern embossed into the bullet, it just gives these lipsticks that little more … oomph, somehow. Admittedly, this is about the only place I do like the Burberry pattern, but that’s by the by.

The shade is a classic bright, bright red, and Military Red is a good name for the shade, it definitely brings to mind the scarlet jackets of the military.

It’s not a harsh matte formulation, it has plenty of slip, and is opaque in more or less one pass over the lips. The formula doesn’t dry the lips out, either, which is great.

This is, however, one of the brightest reds I own. And I kind of love it for that. It’s very definitely a statement shade, if you’re wearing this, no one will notice much, if anything else that you have on your face, so it’s definitely not one for wallflowers. I think of it (a little bit) as a Snow White kind of red, ie one that’s perfect for the very pale, I can see this working very well on the very pale, or the very dark, I’m not too sure how it would work on a medium or olive skintone, to be honest.

Here it is in the context of my face:

I really like this shade, the formulation hasn’t blown me away as much as some other matte formulations have this year (Art Deco, for example), but it’s a great lipstick all the same. I haven’t noticed any bleeding, and it lasts quite well, but can fade somewhat from the centre.

Burberry Lip Velvets cost £23 and are available from Harrods – incidentally, the shade swatches on the Harrods website bear no relation whatsoever to the actual lipstick shades, I’ve noticed, so make sure you do a thorough search around the internet to check out the colour of any lipsticks you want to buy.

The Fine Print: Press sample, but there’s a few other shades that I want to pick up, I think…